3 Creative Garden Drainage Solutions

Creative designs in drainage solutions are attractive and interesting. However, the one innovative design people really appreciate is the one that fits their landscaping plan and solves their problem. Fashioning the perfect design is simply a matter of looking at property and brainstorming. Possible solutions include changing the slope, designing a catch basin, or building retaining walls.

Changing the Slope

With slight modifications to residential drainage systems, slopes are improved or reduced, allowing water to pool and be absorbed. Building these shallow depressions provides moisture for grass, plants, and trees. Instead of wasting runoff, it is recycled and reduces expensive outdoor watering bills.

Catch Basins

These pool-like additions enhance any décor, as they can be a grass bowl, a circle of stones, or an attractive, colored concrete focal point. Although the homeowner knows these are drainage solutions, viewers simply think they are an eye-catching addition to the landscape plan. As a modern form of yard art, these innovative products are placed where they are needed. The depression of grass may be kidney shaped, oval, or oblong, with distinctly different groundcover or borders of low shrubs or flowers. Randomly placed river rocks mimic a dry lakebed, while carefully stacked slabs of granite or flagstone outline the basin and provide places to sit. Basins of concrete make perfect residential drainage systems; when drains are set a few inches off the bottom, birds and wildlife flock to this water reservoir to play and drink.

Retaining Walls

On steeper slopes, retaining walls allow landscapers to be creative. The walls can be any height from short to tall and continuous or broken into segments. Allowing the water to cascade from one wall to another creates rainy day delights and neighborhood envy.

.No matter where water accumulates, there are drainage solutions. Finding the right one to fit the property and landscape design is easy. The homeowners simply decide if they want to adjust the slope, create a basin, or liven up the landscape with retaining walls.